Kingdom of Heaven
Talk about redemption. After his “Troy” fiasco, Orlando Bloom is back in my “ahhh, ok” list. Ridley Scott has earned my respect. The girl, I’m in love with. And, I’ll get around to learning her name soon enough.
What can I say, I went in with the lowest of expectations. Crusades? Christians fighting Muslims? Jerusalem? I was prepared for a gorefest, lots of blood, weak, overly politically-correct script, and no flair whatsoever.
Boy was I surprised. That movie is probably my favorite of this year. And coming from someone who’s movie tastes rarely coincide with mainstream Hollywood’s big-budget megamovies, it’s something.
One funny thing to note was that the film’s one ‘romance’ seen had a song in arabic. The two were “copulating” (yes, this IS a polite blog) to a lullaby. A song mother’s typically sing to put their babies to sleep.
“Twinkle Twinkle, Who’s your daddy! You like that, huh, dirty girl?”
First, there was the cinematography. The blue tint gives me chills. It speaks of death, life, anger, fear, love, hate…
The movie not only sidestepped the ‘no flair’ issue, it stomped it out. Messages, through and through. God? Let me tell you about… no! fuck it. This post isn’t degenerating into another God-bashing marathon. For once, a movie had a morale that I truly understood, and respected.
Relatively very little fighting for a Crusades periodpiece. No evil religion. Simply put, it was humanity in its essence. Fighting against the beast in us, and the terrible influence of fundamentalism.
It has been ages since a good movie with knights and kings, barons and princesses… I’d missed that.
Then there was the girl. Ah… the girl.